When Opportunity Strikes; Your Losses Are Their Gain

The Opportunist Shoplifter is a trick shoplifter to figure out. At their core, the opportunist shoplifter is not a person who came into a store with the intention to steal. Rather they are a generally honest customer who was presented with an opportunity to cause a loss to the store. They let that opportunity get the best of their normally honest judgment.

A common example of opportunistic theft is clothing losses in a fitting room. A customer goes into a fitting room to try on some clothes. There are extra clothes in there from the last customer that the store’s employees did not clean out. While the customer is trying on their clothes they realize that no one is paying any attention to the fitting rooms. They decide to steal one of the left over pieces of clothing because they know no one will notice.

When I train employees, I give another example. It might not be theft, per se, but it still causes a loss to your business. A customer comes to the cash register to buy some items and a cashier makes a mistake while ringing them up. They erroneously bag an item without charging for it. An honest customer who notices the error in the store will speak up to correct the error. If that same customer does not realize the mistake until after they get home, they may or may not go out of their way to return the item back to the store.

Opportunistic theft can also be as simple as a customer who is looking at a small item. When they realize that no one is watching, they pocket the item instead of paying for it. I once saw a customer who was standing in a very long checkout line finally get frustrated at the wait. He screamed how ridiculous it was, and left the store- with his entire cart full of product he hadn’t paid for.

In each of these scenarios, the root cause is a breakdown of operating procedures. The fitting rooms should be cleaned after each customer. The cashier’s should be diligent in ringing up every item. The store employees should provide excellent and attentive service to all customers regardless of where they are in the shopping process. By reducing the opportunities through operational accuracy and standard levels of execution, you reduce the amount of opportunities that are presented within your store.
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